Sunday, December 25, 2011

Have a very happy Chaldean Christmas!

With thanks: Aymenn

For all Point of No Return's Christian readers, here is a version of the carol 'Come all Ye Faithful' in Chaldean neo-Aramaic - dedicated to the Middle East's dwindling Christian populations. Two-thirds of Iraq's Christians have followed the Jews into exile, hundreds of thousands of Coptic Christians have fled Egypt this year, and it may not be too long before it will have been forgotten that the Middle East was ever other than Arab Muslim.

We dedicate Christmas greetings to an outstanding Christian and our Man of the Year: Canon Andrew White. The vicar of St George's Anglican church of Baghdad has not only championed the rights of Christians, he has spoken out fearlessly on behalf of the few remaining Jews in Iraq whose lives have been put at risk when their names were divulged by Wikileaks.

We will not forget how last year Canon Andrew White made a dangerous journey to Ezekiel's shrine, to see with his own eyes the state of this holy site, which Jews fear will be turned into a mosque. We know he is desperate to save Iraq's remaining Jewish heritage. We thank him for everything he has done for us and will do in the future.

10 comments:

Dear SylviaThanks, like you I got rather excited about this but unfortunately the article is from 27 Jan 2009http://logicalsceptic.blogspot.com/2009/01/govt-to-recover-assets-in-muslim-lands.htmlThe question is what progress has been made since 2009 collecting claims? The JPost needs to do a follow-up article.

he wants to do the complete evaluation of the assets Jews left in Arab lands.But hasn't that been done before? I seem to remember that it was done in the States y several outfits, and started in Israel until Beilin "retired" those documents. Oh well.The only thing positive is that he has been in politics and he knows every turn there.

It is refreshing to see that people like Canon White exist, at a time when what dominates the Anglican news abroad are the Sizers and the Sabeels and the Tutus. These are busying themselves with divestments and Bds when he is concerned with people as such, and the survival of Judeo-Christian intellectual heritage and the safety and survivsal of his flock.

I know I am going to raise eyebrows when I say that many among this blog's readers owe something to Christians like Canon Andrew White.

Indeed few people know that it was a Christian organization founded in England in 1855 that provided the structure model, the advice and the encouragement that helped the Universal Israelite Alliance (Alliance Israelite Universelle) accomplish its mission educating Jews of the East and North Africa.

Even the Alliance's name was inspired by that organization's, which was called "The Universal Evangelical Alliance."

You may be right,anonymous, but it seems like plenty of Chaldean celebrations take place in December too.Sylvia, yes, the Alliance was modelled on the Universal Evangelical Alliance, a British Protestant organisation. Later a British branch of the Alliance was established which came to be known as the Anglo-Israel Association.

Anon, the Chaldean church is a break away from the Assyrian Nestorian Church. The Chaldean break off joined the Catholic church as a uniate church.

As far as Beilin is concerned, he would have us believe that by suppressing the whole issue of Jewish property in Arab lands he was working for "peace." Now he is on at least one European payroll. His Geneva Initiative, for instance, was funded in part by --I believe-- by the Swiss govt.

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Introduction

In just 50 years, almost a million Jews, whose communities stretch back up to 3,000 years, have been 'ethnically cleansed' from 10 Arab countries. These refugees outnumber the Palestinian refugees two to one, but their narrative has all but been ignored. Unlike Palestinian refugees, they fled not war, but systematic persecution. Seen in this light, Israel, where some 50 percent of the Jewish population descend from these refugees and are now full citizens, is the legitimate expression of the self-determination of an oppressed indigenous, Middle Eastern people.This website is dedicated to preserving the memory of the near-extinct Jewish communities, which can never return to what and where they once were - even if they wanted to. It will attempt to pass on the stories of the Jewish refugees and their current struggle for recognition and restitution. Awareness of the injustice done to these Jews can only advance the cause of peace and reconciliation.(Iran: once an ally of Israel, the Islamic Republic of Iran is now an implacable enemy and numbers of Iranian Jews have fallen drastically from 80,000 to 20,000 since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Their plight - and that of all other communities threatened by Islamism - does therefore fall within the scope of this blog.)